Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The reliability of psychiatric diagnosis in Israel's Psychiatric Case Register

1984; Wiley; Volume: 69; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1600-0447.1984.tb02510.x

1600-0447

Ann B. Goodman, Michael Rahav, Miriam Popper, Y Ginath, Erica Pearl,

Mental Health Treatment and Access

ABSTRACT– To determine the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses in the Israel Psychiatric Case Register, DSM‐III criteria were applied to case record abstracts of first admissions to a large psychiatric hospital in Jerusalem. The DSM‐III diagnoses were compared with ICD‐8 recorde diagnoses. Between 40 and 50% of those originally diagnosed as schizophrenia were re‐diagnosed into less severe categories. The proportion diagnosed as affective disorder doubled from 21% for ICD‐8 diagnoses to 40% for DSM‐III diagnoses. The unreliability concerned the diagnoses of schizophrenia and affective disorder. Findings suggest that the introduction of standardized diagnostic criteria in Israel will lead to a substantial increase in the number of cases diagnosed as affective disorder, although difficulties involved in differentiating schizophrenia from the major affective disorders remain. The DSM‐III findings suggest a high prevalence of affective disorders among Jews.